What is a luxury car? It should be an automobile that, for a higher price, offers more than the average car. It should also convey an air of superiority to its owners. For 50 years, the Packard corporation did this better than anyone. And unlike many long-defunct automobile brands that are today only known by the nerdiest of car nerds, the Packard name is still fairly well known.
James and William Packard went into the automobile business in 1899 in their hometown of Warren, Ohio as the New York and Ohio Automobile Company. Their first car was a single cylinder model with only 9 horsepower. This was a time when cars were still called “Horseless Carriages”. One of their buyers was Henry Bourne Joy, a Detroit-based aristocrat. He loved it so much that he got a group of investors to buy the company and rename it the Packard motor company. In 1903, the company opened a new plant in Detroit.
Within a decade, Packard established itself as a maker of fine luxury automobiles. It was one of the “3 P’s” of American ultraluxury cars along with Pierce Arrow and Peerless. During this time, the company created one of the greatest ad slogans in history. Supposedly, JW Packard in 1900 was asked if his automobile was a good one. Packard’s response “Ask the man who owns one”. And it made its way into their advertisements and brochures. The idea was that the quality of their cars was so great that any of their owners would vouch for it.
Alvan Macauley would be the most important person in Packard’s history. A West Virginia native, he became the company’s general manager in 1910, then was promoted to President in 1916, a role he held until 1939. His tenure spanned the company’s golden age.
During the Roaring 20s, the Packard was the ultimate statement of success. They outsold every other luxury car brand and exported to more than 61 countries. The royal family of Japan had no less than 10. Things were going well, but I’m sure you can guess what happened next.
With the Great Depression, the wealthy people who formed Packard’s customer base saw their fortunes wiped out. And while Cadillac was backed by General Motors, which had a broad range of cars that cushioned their losses, Packard did not have that. But Packard had lots of cash on hand and an efficient single assembly line.
In 1935, Packard went downmarket with the 120. This was a bold move that paid off. Sales that year tripled and then doubled in 1936. Packard was the only independent American luxury automaker to survive to 1939 as Stutz, Duesenberg, and Pierce Arrow all died off. The 120 required a new factory to use mass production lines and the company soon had a bifurcation. There was the expensive “Senior” models and the cheaper “Junior” models, the 120 and the Super Eight above it, despite the Junior models outselling the Senior models by an order of magnitude, the company required an even amount of labor for both due to how much work was done by hand.
In 1938, the company moved even further downmarket with the 110. Many say that this greatly diluted the company’s prestige but the car sold well.
During the war, Packard built aircraft and marine engines. Under license from Rolls Royce, they built their own version of the Merlin engine, the V1650, that powered the P-51 Mustang. Ironically, the Mustang was known as “The Cadillac of the Skies”.
After the war ended, Packard was in good shape. But several fatal mistakes would do them in. First of all, they chose not to have separate styling for their more expensive models. It was now very hard to tell a Six from and Eight. They also continued to move downmarket, even offering models to cab drivers. This further diluted their image.
In 1948, Packard redesigned their cars with a new “envelope” look. Some said it looked futuristic, but others said it looked like an “upside down bathtub”. In 1949, Packard introduced Ultramatic, their first automatic transmission. In 1950, Packard was outsold by Cadillac for the first time.
For 1951, Packard gave their cars a redesign. The new look was less radical and similar to other cars at the time. Sales continued to slide and a fatal crisis occurred in 1953: Ford and GM got locked into a brutal price war. Independent automakers could not afford to compete with such low prices, so they started to merge; Kaiser-Frazier merged with Willys-Overland, Hudson and Nash merged to form AMC, and Packard was tied up with Studebaker.
1955 was a last ditch effort for Packard, they introduced their first ever V8 engine on a set of redesigned models. The engines were so powerful that they’d break the transmissions. But this new life was not enough. Sales kept falling and Packard production in Detroit stopped in 1956.
But they didn’t want Packard to die a dignified death. For the next 2 years, the Packard name was slapped on rebadged Studebakers. These “Packardbakers” were a humiliating final trial for one of the greatest automotive marques ever. In 1958, the Packard name was retired.
In the 70s and 80s, the Budd Bayliff company, which had bought the rights to the name, started a business modifying ordinary cars and slapping on the “tombstone grilles”, resulting in some very hideous creations.
In 1999, businessman Roy Gullickson tried to revive the Packard name with an ultra luxury sedan that had an all aluminum body and a 440 horsepower V12. But it never amounted to anything.
There is one legacy of Packard however that stills stands: in 1957, Studebaker-Packard, realizing its precarious financial condition may have forced it to stop building cars, negotiated a deal with Mercedes-Benz to sell their cars out of S-P dealers. The car company that was the luxury car of the past was now being sold alongside the car company that would be the luxury car of the future. And so Packard is certainly responsible in no small part for vaulting Mercedes to the position it enjoys today.
So that’s Packard, a car company started by two pioneering brothers that quickly came to offer some of the greatest cars in the world. It was done in by not being able to match the Big 3’s economies of scale and by diluting its image through cheaper models.